Archive for the ‘Art news’ Category

What is Sexy Codicology? An independent project that aims to expand interest and awareness of medieval illuminated manuscripts to the widest audience possible through social media. They discover and explore digitized special collections around the world, hunting for beautiful illuminated manuscripts which they share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest as well as their blog Sexy Codicology. They have also developed Maps of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Available Online and Codicologywhere they explain the basics of the various types of manuscripts. And they have developed a manuscript app — the DMMapp — that links to more than 500 libraries in the world from which users can browse digitized manuscripts. DMMapp is open source and always looking for contributions in its development as well as additional library collections for new content.

In “The Art of learning: Why art history might be the most important subject you could study today,” Art historian Noah Charney argues that the study of art history and a humanities-based education is more important than ever. The emphasis placed on the study of STEM subjects can diminish the perceived value of the humanities major, leading some to view these disciplines as purely whimsical and unpractical. In fact, Charney points to John Berger and his groundbreaking book Ways of Seeing to show how Art history develops the skills that increase critical thinking which are especially important in this age of fake news and alternative facts.

The Nationalmuseum Stockholm is making 3,000 high-resolution images of its most popular artworks available for free download on Wikimedia Commons. Because the Nationalmuseum is currently closed for renovation, only a small part of the collections is accessible to the public. “To provide more opportunity for people to enjoy its artworks, the museum embarked last year on a joint project with Wikimedia Sweden. As a result, high-resolution images of some 3,000 paintings from the collections are now available for download on Wikimedia Commons as public domain. This means they are part of our shared cultural heritage and can be freely used for any purpose. The images are also now zoomable, but not currently downloadable, in Nationalmuseum’s online database.

Today, Ocotber 3, James Turrell and David Adjaye will participate in “Hard Things are Hard: A Conversation with James Turrell and David Adjaye for the Breakfast Session of SXSL. SXSL or South by South Lawn, is President Obama’s response to Austin’s SXSW (South by Southwest). SXSL presents a series of conversations and performances on the topic of civic engagement.

The Silk Road and the information superhighway have intersected at “Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road.” This exhibition, currently at the Getty Center in LA until September 4, is the joint effort of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Dunhuang Academy and the Chinese government who share a goal to protect and conserve the ancient decorated temples known as the Mogao Grottoes. This partnership has existed for 27 years and has employed the Getty’s “whole-body medicine” approach to preservation which involves a holistic, all encompassing assessment of the site (weather, temperature, geologic stability etc.) in addition to an evaluation of artistic styles and materials.

You can read more about their joint conservation work here and learn more about the exhibition, including installation videos here.

Lamassu, Assyrian winged creature and protective spirit that guarded a gate along Ninevah’s city walls before it was vandalized by ISIS.

the statue of a winged bull at the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh, near Mosul in modern Iraq. It’s one of countless treasures destroyed by vandals, militants or military action in the region in the past 15 years.” So begins the first in a series of stories about lost ancient art from Iraq and Syria.

These stories comprise the Museum of Lost Objects, a 10-part series and podcast produced by the BBC. Museum of Lost Objects follows looted, lost and destroyed antiquities or ancient sites, tracing the local histories, legends, personal stories surrounding Syrian and Iraqi antiquities from their creation to their demise.

In a new game created byAtelier Games, you can be Lissitzky’s Bolshevik red wedge defeating the white circle. Lissitzky’s Revenge is based on El Lissitzky’s iconic 1919 Suprematist work “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge.” Creator Chris Totten, Game Artists in Residence at American University, and Atelier Games aim to “create unique art-based games, explore the viability of utilizing non-digital media for game art production, and introducing game art and development as a creative possibility for non-traditional audiences.” They are currently researching future games based on René Magritte and the Ashcan School.

For everyone saddened by the events at the Mosul Museum in February, please take a look at Project Mosul. Project Mosul is an action by the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage that is looking for volunteers to help them virtually restore the Mosul Museum. They need to find photos, process data, contribute to the construction of their website and help them organize the effort to identify the artifacts in the Mosul Museum. If you are interested in joining their effort, email projectmosul@itn-dch.net.
If you are trying to keep up to date on the state of the Mosul Museum and the Assyrian archeological objects, here are a few blogs to follow:Gates of NinevehConflict AntiquitiesAssociation for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA)SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone

On January 1, the Freer and Sackler Galleries released their complete digitized collection online. More than 40,000 works from the Smithsonian’s Asian and American art museums are now available, with more than 90 percent of the images available in high resolution and without copyright restrictions for noncommercial use. The Freer and Sackler Galleries are the first of the Smithsonian Museums to release their entire collection online. The project required 6,000 staff hours in the past year, 10 terabytes of data, and 50,000 images. Rapid Capture Pilot Project was utilized to quickly digitize the enormous collection of objects.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery contain some of the most important holdings of Asian art in the world. They also house Whistler’s Peacock Room, numerous Whistler paintings, drawings and prints, as well as works by Whistler’s contemporaries. You can search this amazing collection here.